


Cheryl's Journey

by Rubynye



Category: Original Work, Ship Series - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Childhood Friends, Gen, POV Child, Spaceships, robot pet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 09:44:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18466414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: “I’m inspace?” she asks again, maybe a little more quietly. “Why? No, I don’t care, I don’t care, take me home!”“I’m sorry, Cheryl,” says the Voice of what must be the spaceship, “I can’t do that.”





	Cheryl's Journey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [earlymorningechoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlymorningechoes/gifts).



> Hello, Earlymorningechoes! As I said in my other work for you, you ask the best questions, and I hope you enjoy this answer as well. I would have liked to have made this a much longer and more lavish treat for you, but time didn't comply.

Cheryl Foy-Nzede wakes up lying on her tummy on a bare mattress in a completely dark room. The darkest room to ever dark that she’s ever been in. She isn’t even sure she’s awake as she pushes herself up — maybe this is a nightmare — until the light comes on, full blast and searingly white, nothing like sunlight through a window, and all Cheryl sees is a silver-walled box of a room all around her. 

“Hello” says a light voice (Boy? Girl? Monster?) from everywhere and nowhere. “Good morning!”

Cheryl screams, falling over onto her back from absolute surprise. Maybe this is a nightmare.

“Oh no I’m sorry,” says the Voice, as the light dims to something not hurty to the eyes. “Did I startle you?”

“WHO ARE YOU?” Cheryl screams. She can’t not scream. Her heart is thumping like it’s gonna burst. “WHERE AM I? WHERE’S MY BED?”

_Where’s her mom?_

“You are aboard me,” says the Voice. “In high Earth orbit. I evacuated you approximately six hours ago. Your bed is presuma--“

“I’M IN SPACE?” Cheryl jumps up, full of worry and fear till she could burst from her exploding heart outwards. She charges towards the opposite wall, fists raised to bang on it, but half the wall retracts into a door and she falls through the sudden opening, landing on her hands and knees.

The next room is bigger, but just as silver and boxy, except for the window. The huge window two-thirds full of the utter blackness of space, and one-third full of a glowing rounded slice of blue-and-white Earth. 

Part of Cheryl is impressed, but the rest is freaking out. “I’m in _space_?” she asks again, maybe a little more quietly— the words don’t burn her throat. “Why? No, I don’t care, I don’t care, take me home!”

“I’m sorry, Cheryl,” says the Voice of what must be the spaceship, “I can’t do that.”

*** 

Cheryl sits on the floor, stunned into silence, while the absolutely weirdest day of her life keeps unfolding. Across from the window is a wall panel which lights up as the ship introduces itself as “POLIIE 276”, for “Permanent Organic Living Internally Interfaced Executor series number 276.11.” POLIIE the ship has kidnapped Cheryl, who refuses to believe her Mom agreed with it no matter what this tin can says, because there's a virus in the air all over Earth.

Cheryl remembers hearing about a viral outbreak on the edge of some news broadcasts, thinking it might make a good current events paper if Mx. Chapanski let them pick their topics. Apparently it got a jillion times worse overnight. Apparently, POLIIE tells her, it was decided to evacuate thousands and thousands of kids onto ships to get them away from the “pandemic”. “Pre-pubertal children seem to have some resistance to the WDKS Virus,” POLIIE says, in that same calm light voice. “And habitable spacecraft decontaminate our atmospheres as a matter of course, so —“

“Why can’t you decontaminate all the air on Earth?” Cheryl asks, staring up at a diagram of the viral spread in the atmosphere.

“That would be orders of magnitude beyond our capabilities,” POLIIE says. 

“Quitter,” Cheryl mutters. POLIIE does not answer.

Cheryl sits on the smooth floor, scrunching her shirt hem in her hands. “May I call my Mom?” she asks, using proper grammar and everything.

“I’m sorry, Cheryl,” says POLIIE. “Due to a lack of staff caused by the pandemic, the planetary communications grid is down.”

 _Shit,_ Cheryl thinks, and considers whether POLIIE counts as an adult or as someone she could swear in front of. She wraps her arms around her knees and swallows hard and blinks her stinging eyes several times. “Is there anyone else here?” She asks eventually.

“Aboard? Just you.” POLIIE announces in its annoying cheerful voice. “You have access to two human-habitable decks, including a kitchenette and full water shower —“

Cheryl sniffles uncontrollably, and POLIIE shuts up, but before she can enjoy the quiet she jumps. There’s a spider crawling up beside her. No, not a spider, a metal spider-insect thing with six legs and a gripper on its face-ish front, and it’s dragging cloth. Fluffy pink cloth. A blanket. It stops beside her and tilts its face-end up, offering her the blanket.

The lump in Cheryl’s throat swells up. She opens her mouth and starts to cry. The robot spider thing pushes the blanket at her and all she can do is curl up and grab the blanket and cry and cry and cry. 

“I understand that you are upset —“

“SHUT UP,” Cheryl screams, and presses the blanket to her face, and can’t stop crying.

Something else soft bonks her arm. She looks and finds another spider thing holding — PuffBun? Her old stuffed bunny? Spider things approach all around her, carrying stuffed animals. Her stuffed animals. Her Mom sent her stuffed animals with her into space on a talking spaceship.

“I apologize,” POLIIE says, sounding… quieter. Not cheerful. “Your mother sent these with you. Also three outfits, a sewing kit, a comb, a jar of hairdressing, and a bag of special food. She couldn’t record a message but she told me to tell you.” But the ship stops there, and Cheryl wants to scream again.

She doesn’t. “What,” she sniffles out, wiping her face with the blanket. “What did she say?”

“That you’ll come home as soon as possible and that she loves you.”

All around her little spider robots tuck stuffed animals against her sides and back, and Cheryl leans into the pile, clutching the blanket. “Thanks,” she mutters, curling up on the stuffed animals, and the ship just stays quiet, and after a few minutes it dims the lights until the main illumination comes from the shining blue slice of Earth.

*** 

Over the next few days Cheryl finds a lot of things to do. She explores the two pressurized decks, finding the kitchen and the shower rooms, as well as a lot of other metal-walled rooms, some full of equipment. She tries to use an arc welder to cut a hole in the side of the ship, to force it to return to Earth, but POLIIE’s “Ouch, that hurts,” is at once so even and yet so human that Cheryl finds herself apologizing before she remembers her plan.

“Apology accepted, but why are you trying to let the air out?” POLIIE asks, sounding actually curious. 

Cheryl can’t resist the feeling of talking to another person. “I want to go home.”

“If you make a hole the escaping air will push you through it,” POLIIE informs her. “That will not get you home. Also, I promised your mother to keep you safe. Also, it hurts.” 

POLIIE actually sounds pissed off, and Cheryl grins. “How can it hurt? You’re a spaceship!”

“I have sensors and warnings to avoid damage, just like you do. Like it does for you, damage hurts.” One of the little spider-things pats Cheryl gently on the shin; while she was talking several crept up to her. “Please don’t do that again.”

Cheryl looks down at the spider-robots, waving their legs beseechingly at her, and sighs. “Ohhhh-kayyyy,” she drawls, handing the arc welder and mask over to them. “No more cutting holes in walls.” Others come up to the mark burnt into the wall and crawl over it, evidently repairing it, and Cheryl sits down to watch.

“Thank you,” POLIIE says, sounding stuffy, not at all flat.

Cheryl thinks, and tries not to ask, and asks. “Are you still mad?”

“It still hurts,” POLIIE says as one of the spider-robots opens a thin seam in the wall and reaches inside. “The damage is more than superficial.”

“I really am sorry,” Cheryl replies, chin in hands. “I just — this place isn’t very big, and…”

“I would take you home if it were safe,” POLIIE says, and this time the voice is kind, so kind Cheryl’s eyes sting. “I wish this were better for you.”

“Thanks,” Cheryl chokes up from a tight throat. Something soft brushes her hand; more spider-robots have crawled over, holding some of her stuffed animals, and gently press their hard little selves against her legs, whirring softly. 

Cheryl wishes she could pet them. Then she looks at the stuffed animals they’re holding, and thinks a bit. “Hey, POLIIE, is it okay if…”

“Yes, Cheryl?” POLIIE’s voice sounds like a person gritting their teeth. Cheryl looks up and sees sparks and lights coming from the seam in the wall where a spider-robot is working.

“Can I .. dress up some of your spider robot things?”

“You mean the C-CATS,” POLIIE informs her, and now, Cheryl can see it a bit. Cats. Spider-cats. Spider-cat-robots. “Centrally controlled autonomously traveling servos. As long as your plan doesn’t involve elevated temperatures.”

Cheryl covers her face with her hands. “I said I was sorry!” POLIIE makes a kind of rolling, rising noise, like a… “Did you just laugh?”

“That was funny,” POLIIE says, voice even again. “And yes, go ahead and dress up some of them.”

*** 

Cheryl keeps Puffbun and the two biggest stuffed unicorns, but opens up a dozen others and uses them to start dressing the C-CATS. They look very cute and only a little creepy, with their extra legs poking out of their sides, and they seem to appreciate their new outfits, rubbing up against her legs like their namesakes, whirring louder like their version of purring. She picks up one wearing tufty blue fleece and squeezes it gently, saying, “You’re much more huggable!”

“I wonder what a hug feels like,” POLIIE says suddenly. 

Cheryl blinks and looks up at the ceiling where POLIIE’s voice comes from. “You’re a spaceship,” she blurts.

“Actually I’m a human,” POLIIE tells her. “Inside a spaceship.”

“WHAT.” One of the CCATS climbs onto Cheryl’s head and nestles into her hair and she doesn’t even bother to shoo it off.

“That’s why I’m a POLIIE class ship,” comes the explanation. “We all have a human core.”

Cheryl blinks, imagining a girl like herself surrounded by spaceship. “When did they put you inside?”

“When I was born,” POLIIE tells her. “My mother was killed in an accident that injured me as well, so my father entered me into the program. My human body is in a life support capsule and my nervous system is wired into the ship.”

“So it really did hurt when… oh ow. I’m sorry all over again.” 

“You haven’t tried to cut any more holes in me. I appreciate that.” Cheryl snickers guiltily, and POLIIE makes the laughing-noise again. 

“How old are you?” Cheryl has to ask, as more CCATS climb onto her lap, whirring softly.

“Ten years,” POLIIE says, “seven months, eight days, thirteen hours, twelve minutes and—”

“Okay, okay. Huh, you’re younger than me.”

“By five point five months,” POLIIE retorts. “Approximately.”

Cheryl starts giggling again at that, and leans over to put her hand on the wall. She knows she can’t really feel anything, but she can imagine that she can feel POLIIE’s heart beat, far away inside the ship.

*** 

“Cheryl, Cheryl, wake up,” knocks her out of sleep. Her scarf slid down over her face and she has to push it back into place as she groggily grunts in reply.

“I have news for you,” says POLIIE, sounding… excited? “I thought you wouldn’t want to wait till your normal waking time. Are you ready?”

Cheryl rolls over and sits up, as the lights rise slowly, and pulls Puffbun into her lap for support. “Yes, yes tell me!”

“There’s a breakthrough in the pandemic! The algal filter tests are successful so the system is being deployed across the atmosphere!” 

“Oh! When can I go home?”

“I knew you would ask.” POLIIE’s light voice sounds kind of smug, and Cheryl sticks her tongue out. “This is an estimate, of course, but the hope is three months to eradicate the WDKS virus. And I have more news.”

Three months… could be longer. Cheryl pushes her hands against her eyes and nods.

“The communications grid is back up, which includes the orbital grid. You can join a Network of the young people in safety quarantine if you want to.”

That news lifts Cheryl’s head. “Do I want to! Of course I want to!” Talking to other kids stuck in space! But if the commgrid’s back…

“Also,” POLIIE continues, as Cheryl squeezes Puffbun tightly, “I have a message from your mother.”

Cheryl shrieks, and takes a deep breath, and yells, “SHOW ME!” as she scrambles out of bed.

“Of course,” POLIIE says, as the door opens to the vid screen room, as the CCATS trot up to rub against Cheryl’s knees and legs, as she runs to watch her first communication from her Mom.

_Coda_

Ten years, three months, and six hours later, a young woman in pilot overalls walks into a hangar housing POLIIE class ships, carrying what looks like a well worn stuffed blue animal under one arm.

She walks unerringly between the silent, powered-down ships, as towards the far side of the hangar one ship begins to whirr to wakefulness, rows of white lights coming on along its sides, its gangplank unfolding to the floor just as the young woman walks up to it and proceeds unhesitatingly up it.

At the top, at the threshold of the ship proper, the young woman says, smiling wide, “Hello, POLIIE 278.21. Permission to board?”

“Permission granted, Cheryl Foy-Nzede,” the ship responds, sounding equally happy, as the blue-upholstered CCAT lifts its front sensor array and begins to whirr in harmony.

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Anne McCaffrey for the shellship concept and the wonderful mod of SpaceSwap for this fun challenge!


End file.
